No need to go suds-less, when there are beer deliveries and even a virtual beer fest ahead.
California craft beer delivered to your door three different ways, plus San Francisco’s first virtual beer festival
As the pandemic spreads its pall over the planet, we’ve been doing our best to support our communities — including supporting our local breweries, bars and restaurants by ordering pickup or delivery. Please keep doing that. As I mentioned in my last column, many breweries across the Bay Area are offering curbside pickup or delivery.
There are other ways, too, to support breweries near and far and supply ourselves with some delicious brews at the same time. Among them: “Beer of the Month” type clubs, online happy hours and even the Bay Area’s first-ever virtual beer festival. Let’s take those in order.
We generally think of “whatever of the month” clubs as ideal gifts, but there’s no reason you can’t pick up a membership for yourself. Not only will you be supporting small businesses — both the brewery and the club — during hard times, but it’s a great way to get hard-to-find beers, which may become even harder to find in these disrupted times.
One of the best, I believe, is the Rare Beer Club ($39 and up, beermonthclub.com), which was known as the Michael Jackson Rare Beer Club back in the 1990s. Happily, it’s still going strong. If you want truly special bottles of beer delivered to your door each month, this is probably your best bet. Each month, it sends out two different limited-release, artisanal beers from breweries around the world. You can specify whether you want to receive one, two or three 750 ml bottles of each beer, depending on how much sharing you want to do.
It’s part of the Monthly Clubs company, which also does monthly shipments of cheese, chocolate, cigars, wine, flowers or any combination of those you can dream up. I’m more interested in the beer, of course, and it does five different offerings, including a U.S. Microbrewed Beer Club ($30). The latter ships you a dozen 12-ounce bottles in four different styles, crafted by breweries that don’t have wide distribution, i.e., these are beers that are not readily available here. (As opposed to the wonderful local breweries you are already supporting via takeout and delivery. Please keep doing that.)
There are three beer-of-the-month clubs that bill themselves as the original one, including Beer Across America, Clubs of America and the Craft Beer Club, which all offer a dozen varied bottles each month. Clubs of America also does clubs for everything from fruit and coffee to chocolate and pizza.
It’s a point of pride for Sonoma County’s California Beer Club ($45 and up, californiabeerclub.com) that it does not traffic in fruit, pizza, cigars or anything other than special, hard-to-find California craft beer. The
California shutdown has caused shipping delays for the club, with March orders delayed until May, so check the website for details. You may want to bookmark it for later.
If you’re looking for something that combines tasty brews with beer education, check out City Brew Tours. Normally, the tour company offers brewery-hopping tours in Portland and other cities, but with that shut down, it has pivoted. It’s offering an online seminar on homebrewing, which includes the basic equipment you’ll need to make your first small batch, and a Beer & Cheese Pairing Home Happy Hour. Find details at www.citybrewtours.com.
And if you’re missing the experience of hobnobbing with brewers and fellow beer lovers on the festival grounds, there’s this: the first-ever San Francisco Beer Festival — Virtual Edition, which will run from 7 to 9 p.m. May 2. Buy tickets ($40, plus $12 shipping) at bayareane.ws/virtualfest, and the organizers will ship a case of 10 different special-release beers and brewery swag to your house the day before the event. A video link to the festival will go live at 7 p.m. the day of the event, letting you enjoy two hours of guided tastings of each beer led by the brewmasters, as well as band performances and interactive games. Now that’s a hoppy thought.